Geico is top spender on YouTube while auto brands slash budgets, analysis finds

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Dive Brief:

YouTube's ad revenue grew 11% from Q3 2017 to Q3 2018, and saw a 51% advertiser renewal rate, according to a press release shared with Marketing Dive citing findings of a new MediaRadar report, "YouTube Year in Review."

Geico, Samsung and Disney combined accounted for 15.5% of YouTube's 2018 revenue. Geico was the top advertiser on the platform, accounting for 6% of its revenue and increasing its spend more than 40% year-over-year. Samsung, the previous year's top spender, accounted for 5.5% of spending on the platform. Disney made up 4%.

Media and entertainment brands, like Hulu and Twenty-First Century Fox, advertised the most on YouTube, accounting for 30% of its revenue.

Dive Insight:

YouTube's strong ad revenue growth and retention of more than half of its advertisers signals that the platform has recovered from several brand safety issues that have plagued the platform in recent years. YouTube has since rolled out several new features aimed at boosting transparency, including parent company Google hiring thousands of moderators to screen videos and more carefully vetting premium YouTube video that it packages for advertisers.

Advertisers are likely attracted to YouTube for the ability to reach billions of viewers worldwide. YouTube continues to grow its traffic and viewership and was projected to overtake Facebook, which has had its own share of consumer privacy issues, by the end of 2018 as the site with the second-most traffic from U.S. visitors, behind Google, according to SimilarWeb research. YouTube users also spend more than an hour a day on average on the platform.

Marketers are shifting more of their ad budgets to online video, as overall viewership was projected to exceed 200 million in 2018, according to Forrester's Video Advertising Forecast. Video ad spending is expected to jump from $91 billion in 2018 to $103 billion by 2023, with the total share of video ad spending increasing from 21% to 34%.

Parent company Google continues to enhance YouTube's offerings for advertisers, having recently launched a new TV screens device type that allows advertisers to target YouTube audiences watching video on TVs through Chromecast, set-top boxes like Apple TV, video game consoles and smart TVs. YouTube ads on TV drove an average lift of 47% in ad recall and 35% in purchase intent, according to Ipsos Lab Experiments. The new offering allows advertisers to access TV-focused analytics and special options to determine a campaign's success. In another announcement, Nielsen Catalina is giving CPG marketers a way to measure in-store sales lift for YouTube ads compared to other digital publishers.